was just interested to know, what sort of processing is the canon 6d (or rough equivalent) doing to the photos before it displays it on the lcd display?

i ask because i took a reference photo of a nice sky the other evening, there were some subtle colours that i wanted to remember.

i know i shouldnt rely onthe lcd screen for colours or anything like that but a quick glance never hurts, i remember being happy with what i saw ( just a simple Av setting 100mm f2)

i downloaded the file which was a raw image, which has everything zeroed, so photos need a bit of processing, but the image i got was almost grey compared to what i saw on the lcd screen.and i had to process the raw in lightroom to look like the image from the back of my camera,as it was what i wanted it to look like! which seems totally stupid lol ive attached the files.

just for reference and for comparison id love to know what sort of processing is applied for the lcd output ?

sometimes digital photography is so darn backward lol

( the first photo is the raw no processing turned into a small jpeg, the second is the procssed image to look like what i saw on back of lcd screen and more what the actual sky looked like )

I've had a similar problem with my 6D. The images I take look dull when imported into Lightroom, and I've never had that issue with my 7D using the same processes. It's to the point I've been questioning the accuracy of the light meter in the camera.

Happens with me all the time. I shoot RAW and the images look flat when imported into LR. Can't really say for JPEG.

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for me the wider issue is also that if when i import my raw files into lightroom, what looked initially acceptable (good histogram no clipping, not much blur) mostly gets zeroed out in the raw converter into a really nasty looking 'exposure' what is the point of tring to expose and get things right in camera, if i then have to go and fiddle around to get it looking like what i thought id exposed for!

i can understand why phtography rules must be such a pain for proffesional photographers now if the initial raw photo looks dull as muck before you tweak it back to something acceptable!

One piece of advice: Always judge exposure using histogram, the R-G-B one.

You understand that digital photos are just bunch of numbers stored in memory right? As long as you recorded the entire scene values within sensor's dynamic range (i.e. not 'blow it'), what appears on screen doesn't matter, a beautiful scene can always be recreated using various mathematical mojos.

for me the wider issue is also that if when i import my raw files into lightroom, what looked initially acceptable (good histogram no clipping, not much blur) mostly gets zeroed out in the raw converter into a really nasty looking 'exposure' what is the point of tring to expose and get things right in camera, if i then have to go and fiddle around to get it looking like what i thought id exposed for!

i can understand why phtography rules must be such a pain for proffesional photographers now if the initial raw photo looks dull as muck before you tweak it back to something acceptable!

If you set Lightroom to open the file with all sliders at zero, of course it is going to look dull on the display. Mine looks relatively dull even though it opens to Lightroom's default auto correction, rather than "zero". I am using Lightroom 4. If you are using 5, I've not tried it. It's possible version 5 performs an even more dull, flattened RAW conversion.

There is a form of artistic control that is allowed and encouraged with digital photography. This should be embraced, not avoided, or thought of as "too subjective to portray reality".

If you don't want to do any post processing, just shoot the pictures as jpegs, and keep experimenting with the camera's picture styles until you get something you think you can live with most of the time. Otherwise, just learn to edit, and make your own develop profiles for Lightroom. It's kind of fun after a while.

And again, the light meter on pretty much all digital cameras I have ever used, becomes less accurate as the available light decreases. This is even true of the beloved 5D3 and 1DX. They all tend to give you an underexposure if you look at the RGB curves. Also as the light gets very low or lacks contrast, the "auto white balance" becomes a whole lot less accurate...

One other variable, is the type of metering you choose for a particular shot. "Evaluative", "center weighted average"..."spot"...etc.

but i would love the option of seeing an image more like the raw file in its unprocessed state.

I am not sure I understand the advantage of displaying on the LCD, a RAW file unprocessed. What would you see?

An unprocessed RAW file is not an image file. It won't look like anything, nor can it be displayed. For a RAW file to be displayed as any form of image, it has to have "some" processing. Whether a lot or a little depends on the machine.

As other's have posted, Canon cameras allow the user to modify, to some extent, the processing the camera will do in order to display an image on the LCD. This is a JPEG. If none of the modifications native to the camera are to your liking, I am assuming there may be third party modifications, but even they will take the RAW data and provide some level of processing.

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I shoot with a Camera Obscura with an optical device attached that refracts and transmits light

I am not sure I understand the advantage of displaying on the LCD, a RAW file unprocessed. What would you see?

You would see the real clipping, the blinking areas on the current cameras are only for jpeg and don't show how much highlights can be recovered from raw. Magic Lantern's raw zebras/histogram & auto-ettr is very helpful here, but even with that you cannot see the clipping *after* shooing because ml isn't able to re-read the raw from the card.

i would still rather like the official output settings that the lcd image is made up of! its much more than just picture style.

it must be out there somewhere?

It is the picture style and nothing more. The picture style, however, has complex jpeg compression algorithms that may or may not be available publicly outside of Canon.

The best way to get the RAW file to replicate the JPEG displayed on the LCD screen during playback is to process your RAWs with Canon Digital Photo Professional software, which came free with your camera.

I am not sure I understand the advantage of displaying on the LCD, a RAW file unprocessed. What would you see?

You would see the real clipping, the blinking areas on the current cameras are only for jpeg and don't show how much highlights can be recovered from raw. Magic Lantern's raw zebras/histogram & auto-ettr is very helpful here, but even with that you cannot see the clipping *after* shooing because ml isn't able to re-read the raw from the card.

I am not sure I understand the advantage of displaying on the LCD, a RAW file unprocessed. What would you see?

You would see the real clipping, the blinking areas on the current cameras are only for jpeg and don't show how much highlights can be recovered from raw. Magic Lantern's raw zebras/histogram & auto-ettr is very helpful here, but even with that you cannot see the clipping *after* shooing because ml isn't able to re-read the raw from the card.

There are tricks (neutral or custom picture style and custom/shifted WB) that you can use to get the histogram and highlight clip warning 'blinkies' to more closely approximate what you can pull from the RAW file. The actual JPG preview image won't look very good, though...so don't go showing it to people.

There are tricks (neutral or custom picture style and custom/shifted WB) that you can use to get the histogram and highlight clip warning 'blinkies' to more closely approximate what you can pull from the RAW file.

Interesting, never heard of this - any details available on how to achieve it exactly? I shoot raw anyway and it would be handy for flipping through the shots and look for real overexposure.

There are tricks (neutral or custom picture style and custom/shifted WB) that you can use to get the histogram and highlight clip warning 'blinkies' to more closely approximate what you can pull from the RAW file.

Interesting, never heard of this - any details available on how to achieve it exactly? I shoot raw anyway and it would be handy for flipping through the shots and look for real overexposure.

Here's a start, and a Google search for "canon uniwb" will pull up plenty of reading material.

There are tricks (neutral or custom picture style and custom/shifted WB) that you can use to get the histogram and highlight clip warning 'blinkies' to more closely approximate what you can pull from the RAW file.

Interesting, never heard of this - any details available on how to achieve it exactly? I shoot raw anyway and it would be handy for flipping through the shots and look for real overexposure.

Here's a start, and a Google search for "canon uniwb" will pull up plenty of reading material.

Thanks for the link. Looks promising.

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I took a hiatus from CR for a year and a half. The discussions haven't changed much. Excellent information is still being shared while people bitching about Canon cameras are still bitching and haven't moved on to Sony